Nice's platforms hum with passengers bound for Cannes and Monaco, but the best ride from the city heads the other way: inland and up. The Train des Merveilles, which links Nice with the medieval town of Tende high in the Alpes-Azur mountains, reopened in December after a year of major engineering works. It was worth the wait.
The route is barely 100km long but climbs a full 1,000 metres, and it does so thanks to 19th-century ingenuity. The line dates to 1883 and is held together by more than 100 bridges and viaducts, plus tunnels and retaining walls in nearly equal numbers. The cleverest bits are helical loop tunnels that spiral inside the mountains to gain altitude. Within ten minutes the villas and chestnut groves of Nice's outskirts give way to jagged peaks, and the valley road below shrinks to a ribbon.
You can ride straight through to Tende, but the stops deserve time. Sospel, about an hour from Nice, is a medieval town on the Bévéra river with a 13th-century bridge, baroque churches and a proper little market. Further up, La Brigue sits at the gateway to the Mercantour national park, its lanes still sleepy until the summer hikers arrive. A couple of miles out of town is the Chapel of Our Lady of Fountains, whose walls are covered in vivid 15th-century frescoes by Giovanni Canavesio — so striking it's nicknamed the Sistine Chapel of the Southern Alps.
Tende itself, at 800 metres, is a cluster of old houses stacked against the mountainside, topped by the ruins of Chateau Lascaris with views towards the Marguareis massif on the Italian border. Reward the climb with a croque monsieur at Stella Alpina, a hybrid outdoor shop and rustic café popular with cyclists. The Musée des Merveilles explains that the surrounding valleys hold one of Europe's largest Neolithic and Bronze Age rock-engraving sites, and that Tende grew rich as a stop on the medieval Salt Road between the Piedmontese Alps and the Ligurian coast.
The real appeal is how easily this pairs with the coast. Back in Nice, Antibes is 40 minutes away by train — marina yachts, 16th-century ramparts, kitesurfers in the bay — while Beaulieu-sur-Mer is a ten-minute hop for belle epoque streets and a swim at Plage de la Petite Afrique. In Nice itself, the fourth-generation Acchiardo serves classics like daube niçoise, and Les Bar des Oiseaux is a bistro lined with painted reproductions of Miró, Klee and Lichtenstein — the bourride, a Provençal fish stew, is a standout.
Practicalities are friendly: the Train des Merveilles runs daily from June to September with an onboard guide on the 9.30 departure, and a Ter Zou! regional day pass covering the line costs €20. Beds at Mama Shelter Nice start around £114 a night, room only. If you want mountain silence and Riviera sunshine in a single short break, this little line is the best argument for ditching the car.